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I'll have to check this software lineup in more detail and see if I have competition for my code manufacturing approach. I use expert-systems techniques to "compile" an enhanced ERD/object model that is not based on UML into the object-relational-mapping code (currently focusing on Java, though I did do an earlier variant with C# as well.)

But I'm not trying to prove a be-all solution with my work, I'm just trying to automate the grunt work and leave the business logic and user interfacing up to skilled developers.

Check out http://msscodefactory.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] if you're curious. I'm debugging the latest version of the PostgreSQL DbIO code right now, and should have that done by Monday. After that I can start doing the "forks" of the PostgreSQL DbIOs for other databases.

They've taken a completely different approach to code production than I do, but it still seems pretty powerful. I think most of what they've accomplished is a clean, elegant variation on good old C pre-processor macros, but restricted so it's a lot harder to hang yourself when writing such code expansions.

It seems to borrow a fair bit from the concept of annotations and UML stereotyping for it's expansion arguments, rather than inspecting a business application model for that information.

It's definitely competition for the grunt code market, but I think my approach requires less work on the part of business modellers, while IBM's approach is probably more comfortable for coders than modellers.

Either way, I'm going to have to hurry up with coding a GUI for this beast so people can use it without groking raw XML.

I just read through your whole site, but I have no idea what MSS Code Factory is, what problems it solves, what it would do for me or why I would want it. I get that it generates code from a model using a bunch of rules, much faster than a human could type it - but that is rarely the critical problem in writing code.

Now, I've worked with various code generators and high level modelling tools for decades, and none of them have been worth the effort so far. The effort involved in learning the system, working around the inevitable bugs in it (usually involving having to keep patching the output again and again as the model evolves), and interfacing with the bits the model can't handle just make them an exercise in frustration. It's a bit like the old regular expression joke.

I'm not saying yours is the same; for all I know it's totally awesome and doesn't suffer from the same problems as all the other ones I've had to deal with - but you are so into your own project that you've forgotten how to explain why anyone else should care.

Take a small step back, put yourself in our shoes, and tell us why we need it.

In a nutshell, one of the big problems that has always faced cross-platform product development is vendor lock in. I provide an abstraction Object-Relational-Mapping architecture that defines the interface to the database, and then implements each database interface using custom code. So unless you have very specific query needs that have to be hand coded through the BL (Business Logic) layers of the manufactured code, you neither see nor touch actual SQL.

EGL (Enterprise Generation Language) is a high level, modern business oriented programming language, designed by IBM to be platform independent. EGL is similar in syntax to other common languages so it can be learned by application developers with similar previous programming background. EGL application development abstractions shield programmers from the technical interfaces of systems and middleware allowing them to focus on building business functionality. EGL applications and services are written, tested and debugged at the EGL source level, and once they are satisfactorily functionally tested they can be compiled into COBOL, Java, or JavaScript code to support deployment of business applications that can run in any of the following environments:

C# and the CLR runtime brought very little to the table that Java already didn't. The Base Class Library (BCL) for the CLR shows that imitation of Java is the sincerest form of flattery. Scala, running on the JVM, leapfrogs C# nicely in almost all respects.

It's worth noting that Microsoft, in its typical schizophrenic fashion, has backed away from.Net for Win 8 development, and instead is pushing HTML 5 and Javascript, of all things. Meanwhile, Java and other JVM hosted languages are seeing steadily increa

exactly, I never see the point of a 'higher level" language that compiles down to java. Now, if it went to C then we might have a good reason for using it - all the benefits of fast, raw C but created from a simple-to-build language that simplifies many common constructs.

I started working using 2GL: manually entering opcode into the machine but I digress.

4GLs exists since a long time. This "EGL" is just a new enterprise (read bloated, inneficient and solving the wrong problems) 4GL. IBM here is creating a new language to bill more $IBM-consulting/hours.

Don't feel threatened: it will be used exactly the same way other 4GLs are.

Code debates are boring folks. Use what works. We have been using EGL for over 4 years with large enterprise customers and it does a great job of bridging the gap between older technologies (COBOL, RPG, Java, VSAM, 3270, 5250) and the web 2.0 world. It interfaces nicely with Java and Javascript so you can freely decide how much to do in EGL, Java or Javascript depending on your needs.